


Everything Fades

by CirillaShepard



Series: Solipsism [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Freeform, Memories, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-09-28 13:26:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10103972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CirillaShepard/pseuds/CirillaShepard
Summary: When a memory feels as real as life, it's as valid as life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER**  
> I do not own anything from the Mass Effect game series (unfortunately) but BioWare does.  
> Damn them.  
> I’m just borrowing their characters for fun when my muse grabs me.  
> __________  
> Hello! It's been a while, sorry about that! Between hospital visits (way too many of them) and dealing with the mother of all flares, I've been hibernating under my covers for a while!  
> Hopefully I'll be back to posting with a bit more regularity now.  
> __________  
> Come and say "hi" on [Tumblr!](http://memoryandthought.tumblr.com)

_“Everything fades away come turning of the tide…for your love I’m sorry, for your pain – don’t worry…”_  
____________  
  
Life, when I stop to think on it, is such a fragile thing.  
  
I cannot count the number of lives I have taken, the amount of breaths stopped short or how many hearts have ceased beating by my hands; but now it seems that all I do is count.  
  
My life has been reduced to a simple game of numbers:  
●The number of breaths I have left in my damaged lungs  
●The number of steps I can take before my body cries for respite  
●The number of times I have looked out of this window and wished for freedom  
●The number of times I wished I had created more memories  
●The number of hours, minutes and seconds that tick by as I wait…and count...  
  
Hmm…I suppose when faced with one’s own mortality on a daily basis you become somewhat used to seeing it dangling on a fine thread.  
  
Saying that, my own death does not faze me – I have had time to grow accustomed to the idea of it and this is strangely comforting.  
I have devoted my endlessly counted time to trying to leave the world a little brighter than I found it – I have atoned, I have made amends and I have loved.  
  
Ah, I have loved.  
_Siha…_  
  
As much as my death does not fill me with the dread it perhaps should; hers fills me with a fear that is far greater than any fear a Reaper could give me.  
  
The thought of losing her, my Siha, when I have only just found her is simply abhorrent to me.  
  
As trite or cliché as it sounds, she has very quickly become everything to me and when I think that the next time I see her may be the last time I watch her easy smile blossoming slowly over her lips, or feel the touch of her hand…  
  
_-skin warm against mine, flushed with exertion and glistening with a faint sheen of sweat; eyes heavy and darkened with lust, a slow wicked smile spreading across sensual kiss-red lips as our mouths meet and move together in an achingly sweet promise-_  
  
Ah, memories. I am grateful for those, even more so these days.  
I cling to them tightly, these memories I slip into so easily now as I feel so often as though the time I’m counting is running out like grains of sand falling through an hourglass.  
  
I am afraid of her death.  
I am afraid for her, for her pain and for her love for me.  
I am afraid she will fight to save me when there is no hope of that; of a futile endeavour that will cause her needless suffering.  
I am afraid, most of all; that the memories will not sustain me and I will forget.  
  
Here, in the dim daylight that filters in through the large windows; the cooling shafts of sunlight that slant across this hospital bed, with the slow mechanical drone of the machines that help me breathe and the hushed tones of the medical staff; I have realised this:  
  
I am afraid and it shames me.


End file.
